#on testosterone no less

[sleepy-shutin]

i don't care to get into most LGBT discourse but i keep seeing this and frankly, i'm so sick of you people as a ~genderweird dykefag~ lmao.

if you've never read stone butch blues, butch is a noun, the persistent desire, looked at lesbian herstory archives, spoken to transgender and genderfucked lesbians, or read any kind of important historical work about lesbianism, then you don't get an opinion on lesboys, multigender lesbians, transmasc or trans man lesbians, butch lesbians, lesbians on T, NONE of it, because you don't know what the hell you're talking about, and i'm so sick of you people acting like you do because you saw a tiktok or a twitter thread or you read a carrd.

lesboys have existed for longer than most of you have been alive. multigender, transmasc/trans man lesbians and other lesbians playing "5D chess with gender" have existed for longer than you've been alive.

everyone's fine with gay and bisexual men being genderweird and being "a man who's a woman who's a man" and every other kind of genderfucked, but the second a woman or a lesbian/dyke does it, they're viciously attacked by fucking everybody for "bringing men into lesbianism" - as if that's something that transgender women haven't been hearing for decades - and 90% of these people aren't women, lesbians, or even attracted to women.

no wonder you people are so inhospitable to trans women. you hold women and lesbians/dykes to such high standards of femaleness/femininity that when we aren't the kind of woman or dyke you think we should be, you throw a tantrum over it. maybe get out of the online LGBT discourse and into the real world of queer and genderfucked people and broaden your perspectives please.

[lgbtqtext]

[funkybongos]

makes your favs middle-aged men

[pineconepie]

Octavian and Vinvent with a reader on her period?

Octavian has any menstrual supplies ready, and if you have bad cramps, he has many teas, heating pads, medications, and etc ready for you! He's already very sweet, but he'd be somehow even sweeter towards you, especially if you have painful cramps. Even if you snap at him, he never gets onto you, especially when you're on your period.

.

Vincent has many supplies stocked up, as well as your most common period cravings if you're anything like me lol. Anything else you want, you will have it within the snap of a finger. He definitely spoils you extra!!

[clownboybebop]

I dress extra masc on my period

[theredumbrellatheory]

:3 yeah

[mrbrrop]

Ok, so I just calculated

If I do get my testosterone around my birthday and if it takes it around around 2-6 months to stop my period

I only have 7-11 more periods to go through for the rest of my life (hopefully)

If it takes a little more time 12-13, which is very little to go though since the average number of periods per life is around 451

IT'S ONLY 1.5-2.4% (each period ~0.2%) (I think? I'm shit at maths)

My life is about to get so much more awesome!!!

MWHAHA FOR REAL NOW!!

[cloud-and-co]

Taking testosterone as a trans man is so cool actually. Testosterone is not poison. It isn't evil. It is freeing and beautiful and I love taking testosterone

[slutforpringles]

visacashapprb: Time to regroup and learn from Quali as we get prepped for race day 🇳🇱

[jessiesjaded]

Guess who's back on hrt hehhehhehe

[menintums]

My insurance is no longer covering my T as of July 1st of this year. wtf. It’s fucking insane to me that you can be prescribed a medication and an insurance can just decide not to cover it and also give you very little notice for that.

Out of pocket cost is $700 for a month supply. It’s still $450 with a coupon. What the fuck.

I’m at a loss rn. I’m so angry and just hopeless. Fuck 🇺🇸

[kansasjustgotgayer]

One of the things I’ve been hoping for on testosterone is arm hair. Forearm hair can be so attractive to me and it’s one of the things I’ve been very eager to develop. I am finally starting to see some hair growth on my arms and I Can’t Stop Looking.

It’s different from everything else because it’s right within my line of sight all the time. I cant always see my facial hair or most other things but I can almost always look down and see my arms.

It really makes me feel the progress thats been made and it makes me all the more excited for my top surgery in a couple months. The things I never allowed myself to want for so long are really happening and its an unbelievable feeling

[an-assortment-of-forks]

top surgery consult NEXT WEEK boys. next week. we made it

[okthisway]

i always read Tearstone Island as Testosterone Island. every single time

[fatal-blow]

the interplay of testosterone and estrogen with chronic triggerpoints/general muscle health is so interesting man my mind is spinning

[an-ruraiocht]

reflections on hormones and medical misogyny and hoop-jumping

in order to start testosterone, i ended up having to pay i think £480 total for three (3) separate appointments with two (2) separate psychiatrists to admit that i'm definitely trans before i could get a referral to an endocrinologist which also cost me several hundred pounds so that they could prescribe testosterone. i was lucky that my GP did the blood tests or i would have had to pay for those too, likewise they took over the prescriptions so i only pay the £9.50ish charge for those rather than the full price, but it was still a hell of a lot of a cash to fork out. i had to pay all of this because the waiting list for a first appointment with the gender clinic is more than five years and bc they make nonbinary people jump through more hoops for referrals than they do for binary trans people following a more conventional transition path. they now test my blood every 3 months to make sure everything's at a healthy level and it's not having a knock-on impact on my organs and they check in regularly about dosage

when i was seventeen i had a single conversation with a GP after which they put me on the combined contraceptive pill, for which i never paid a penny, and which i stayed on more or less continuously (there was one break for a few months) until i was 28. for 11 years this altered my body's hormone levels to the point of suppressing my testosterone to the absolute lowest level that could be considered technically "healthy". it just about performed its required function of making my periods regular and semi-bearable, but along the way this fucked my joints, my muscle strength, my ability to grow body hair, my energy levels, and my ability to concentrate. for eleven years. on the basis of one appointment with a non-specialist as a teenager. they never tested anything except my blood pressure and even that got skipped as time went on and they could dismiss it as "nice and low" while ignoring my chronic anaemia and fatigue

why does fucking with my hormones in one direction require constant oversight and jumping through tons of hoops, and the other doesn't? why are they so alert to the side effects of gender-affirming care, and completely ignoring the side effects of other hormonal healthcare?

it's not that they shouldn't have prescribed me the pill or should have put additional barriers in place; it's that i shouldn't have had to jump through all those hoops to access testosterone. it's not that they shouldn't be monitoring the impact of the testosterone, it's that they should have monitored the impact of the pill. it's not that 17yo me shouldn't have been trusted to give informed consent, it's that 17yo me wasn't informed but was permitted to consent, while 28yo me was informed but not permitted to consent, and had to jump through dehumanising hoops instead to have strangers assess whether they deserved to make choices

they fucked me over with both sets of hormones. they whacked my body's hormone sliders firmly towards the oestrogen/progesterone ends of the spectrum without a second thought, because that was "natural", so fuck the side effects, but they made it as hard for me as possible to try to go the other way. i was anaemic and could scarcely grow body hair and had injuries that refused to heal for years and couldn't concentrate or stay awake for a DECADE but i'm supposed to be scared of the possibility of male pattern baldness? (i mean. i am. but going a bit bald feels a small price to pay for feeling awake when my eyes are open, to borrow a phrase from the raven cycle)

so much of it in both directions is medical misogyny: the idea that i have a particular body which is supposed to behave in a particular way and so the only "solutions" available are those which conform to this, and the lack of research into the actual effects of hormones like oestrogen and progesterone on other health conditions

but what really sickens me is how they say "you can't possibly make this decision, we have to keep people away from these side effects, we don't know what impact this has on bodies long-term" but they'll put a 17yo on the pill and then abandon them despite ten years of chronic illness with no further investigation into how artificial hormone levels might be affecting some of that chronic illness. you can't have it both ways, medicine. either hormones need monitoring and caring about or they don't

access to the pill is healthcare. it should be done on an informed consent model, and needs careful monitoring to make sure it's helping not harming, and adjustments if necessary.

access to gender affirming hormones is healthcare. it should be done on an informed consent model, and needs careful monitoring to make sure it's helping not harming, and adjustments if necessary.

instead you have to fight tooth-and-nail for one and pay through the nose for it, and the other distributed carelessly with little thought or follow-up. i am only now beginning to realise how profoundly i was being fucked over by the pill and just because it also helped me does not mean it was fine that that happened and that, crucially, nobody would have realised it was happening if i hadn't decided to go on T (prompting both investigations into my actual hormone levels, and then perceptible changes once they began to shift). because they did not give a fuck. because it was "natural" for a "female" body to behave like that, right?

anyway idk if i'm gonna stay on T forever but i don't think i could ever go back on the combined pill knowing what i know now about how it's possible for my body to feel when my T level isn't literally 0.5. i'm not thrilled about the idea of going for lucky dip hormone fluctuations given how well that's gone for me in the past but i guess i'll cross that bridge when i come to it. there's got to be some kind of viable option out there for me